Dr Maurice Kottelat passed through Singapore on his way back to Switzerland and decided to call on us at the museum. No holiday for him this time round; he is here to finish up existing projects with the fishy folks here at RMBR, start new collaborations and discuss new supplements for the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

Maurice’s ties with the museum go back a long way; in 2006, he and Tan Heok Hui (with two other collaborators) discovered what was then the world’s smallest vertebrate, Paedocypris progenetica, measuring a mere 7.9 mm long at maturity. Earlier this year, a frog, Paedophryne amauensis (individuals measure 7.0 mm at maturity), dethroned P. progenetica,but P. progenetica still holds the record for the world’s smallest fish.

Maurice and Peter in 2006, using a rather avant-garde method to look at a very small fish.